


i carry your heart

by kynikos



Series: zk drabbles 12.20 [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (kinda), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coffee, F/M, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Texting, Zutara Drabble December 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27874661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kynikos/pseuds/kynikos
Summary: Katara figures some things out, over a series of conversations with Zuko, over text and in coffee shops.For Zutara Drabble December 2020!
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: zk drabbles 12.20 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037115
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24
Collections: ZK Drabble December 2020





	i carry your heart

**Author's Note:**

> third day of zutara drabble december! the prompt was 'Heavy Hearts'.

They had boarded up Pao’s. She didn’t know all the details, but as far as she could tell the owner had been involved in some kind of drug bust and had moved to Ontario. She had stood there on the curb for a while, staring at the empty building.

Sometimes it had been a little weird, but it had been a nice place. Somewhere to sit, and drink… mediocre bubble tea or iced coffee, and eat _really fucking good_ macarons. Do homework, and hang out with Zuko as they each tried to describe their individual classes in the most exaggeratedly hellish way possible. Sometimes they brought others, dragged from their respective spheres and made to experience Pao’s Tea House in all its unkempt glory. But, although the macarons more than made up for the weirdly salty boba, those _others_ never stayed around for long.

And it was a joke between them that if a date couldn’t handle the relationship after experiencing Pao’s Tea House, then maybe they were better off gone.

And now the shop was dark, closed, dead, as a result of coke-selling-gone-wrong. Or something.

_Ding._

**katara**

It was Zuko. She pulled her eyes off the storefront.

**??**

**the dragon is gone**

**what**

**its closed and boarded up**

**shit. that sucks**

**yeah**

She stood there for a while longer. The street was wet, water pooled into the gutter from the rain that morning.

**what did you want tho?**

She waited for another few moments. He didn’t respond, and she walked back to her car, kicking soaked leaves out of her path as she went. No Pao’s, no coffee, since she didn’t have the kind of job that could support her caffeine addiction if a chain store was her dealer.

The drive back to campus was… cold. And her dorm room bed was even colder, and she lay in bed in her jeans and coat, and stared at nothing, trying to think of the next best place to buy coffee from, and wondering if she'd ever have a good macaron again.

* * *

_Ding._

It had clearly been a mistake to leave notifications on. She fumbled at the phone for a moment, ignoring the pointed side-eyes from people around her.

**katara**

**yeah whats up**

**where are uoy**

**church**

**you**

**haha**

**wait really**

**w my gram**

**shhh**

**the man id peaching**

**i-**

**good for him**

**PREACHING smh**

She put the phone away and tried to pretend she hadn't been doing anything with it anyway, as her gram tried to catch her eye. She knew that if she actually met her gramgram’s eyes, she’d just get the Look. And Katara had gotten the Look before. So she stared at the pastor, expression full of holy fascination.

When the service was over and she was back sitting in her car – ‘Don’t you think you'd better start coming to church every Sunday, Katara dear?’ ‘Um, maybe, I’ll think about it’ – she checked her phone, and Zuko had asked if he could call her.

**sorry i didnt see this**

**okay yeah you can call**

**actually nvm**

**?**

**wow**

She drove off, thinking disrespectful and probably blasphemous thoughts about her recent religious experience. And, weirdly, she found herself thinking about Zuko’s usual drink order at Pao’s – which was _gone_ now, shit – and how she would always take only a single sip from it because it was _way_ too sweet for any normal person. Some kind of caramel cream creation that really shouldn’t have been called ‘coffee’, that she was pretty sure he had created himself.

It was December. And it was _cold_. Maybe some people, normal people – Zuko, probably, the wealthy son of a bitch – had working heaters in their cars, but all her air conditioning system did was move air around.

* * *

_Ding_.

**hey kat**

**can i say something**

**yeah**

She was trying to cook pasta sauce, a tiny pan over an even smaller burner in the common area, filled with tomato and garlic and spices and so on, ingredients given to her by her dad when he had come by to visit. She was aware that she would have to move the sauce somewhere else when it was done, to make room for the pasta and boiling water. She had decided to solve that problem when she got to it.

**im busy mf what you want**

They had found a new place to meet up at. The Jasmine Dragon, which had apparently opened almost the moment it closed. Zuko had actually applied for a job there – he was applying to work anywhere, lately, apparently desperate to find a source of income before his family cut him off – but they had turned him down.

But it was a nice place. Better tea than Pao’s, and, somewhat suspiciously, macarons that tasted _exactly the same_. Neither of them had asked, but they had decided together that someone had gotten the recipe, or whatever the secret was, out of Pao before he had fled the country.

**what you doing?**

**makin food**

**spaghett**

**why**

**thinking about carry your heart w me**

She had the poem in her head – the e.e. cummings poem – since she had just been reading it for the American Lit class, so she hummed along to its rhythm, which mad her think of the Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka moment when he sings the ‘in the springtime’ poem on the bicycle, which made her think of Gene Wilder’s other quotes in that movie, ‘Ode’ by Arthur O’Shaughnessy among them, which then led to her trying to remember as much of ‘Ode’ as possible (she only could remember the first stanza and half of the second), and so on, traveling a strange train of thought.

So when the phone _ding_ ed again she had to take a moment to reset herself.

**…what**

**…thats sweet?**

**do you know that poem**

**which poem**

**bitch the carry your heart poem**

**by ee cummings**

**i dont think so**

She sighed.

**well find it and read it okay**

**its really good**

**okay**

The sauce had begun to bubble, and she had to juggle pots and pans, and when she finally got the pasta going the water boiled over and she had to clean it up, so it was about an hour before she finally sat down to eat and realized Zuko had never actually said what it was he wanted to tell her in the first place.

* * *

_Ding._

**are you busy?**

**wanna go dragon?**

***to**

**sure**

**half an hour, i need to finish smth first**

The sun had just set when Zuko texted, that time, asking if she wanted to go to the Dragon.

The owner knew them by now, and knew what they liked to order. The only thing that changed was the cup of tea – the ‘tea of the day’, he called it. He made his own – that he had started adding to their order. He treated it almost like a wine tasting, Katara thought, talking about notes and hints and subtleties in the flavor.

And they shared it before having their coffees, and he watched them drink it like a proud father sending his child off into the world.

The funny thing was, it was always _really good_.

It had been a while – almost two weeks – since they had last been there, though. Zuko had had… whatever it was business majors have, and she had tried to put effort into actually remembering and taking notes for her lectures.

**okay ill go now and get us a tsble**

**tablw**

**TABLS**

**fml**

She laughed and finished her lecture notes as fast as possible with a smile on her face that she didn’t even notice was there.

When she got there, Zuko was in a booth with their drinks in front of him. When he saw her he beamed and waved her over, gesturing at the table with an inordinate amount of pride for having picked a good one.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You look nice.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Thanks. It’s all the notes I've been writing, really adds to the beauty, I think.’

He shrugged. ‘How are you?’

They talked for a while, until the moon was bright in the sky.

‘It’s a full moon tonight,’ Katara pointed out.

‘Really?’

‘Yup.’

‘Do you… track the phases of the moon?’ he asked, a grin spreading over his face.

‘What if I do?’ she grumbled, reaching over and smacked his shoulder.

‘Let’s go look at it,’ he said, standing. ‘Come on, let’s moonwatch.’

‘Cute date idea. You'd get a lot more girls with that attitude.’

‘Hmm…’

When they were outside, they stared at the moon. It was… exactly like it sounded, and her neck got sore pretty quickly.

‘Beautiful,’ Zuko said, and they both looked down at the same time, and their eyes met. His widened, just a bit.

She would have laughed from the clichéness of it all if she hadn't been so suddenly unsure of herself. She did laugh, anyway, a moment too late for it not to be awkward.

‘Anyway,’ he said, and trailed off. And she spent the rest of their time together thinking back over all of their conversations, and wondering what was happening.

* * *

It took her a while to realize.

* * *

It was two in the morning and she was lying in bed, typing frantically.

**i love you. you know the ee cummings poem you told me to read? i carry your heart with me, i carry it in my heart. thats me. the phrase ‘heavy hearted’ means sadness but when i say my heart is heavy i mean that its heavy with the thought of you in it. i didnt know i was in love w you but i wasnt paying attention. youve always been there for me, youve been around when no one else was. you are the best friend ive ever had. you are whatever a moon has always meant, and whatever a sun will always sing is you. and im mad that it took me so long to realize**

She hesitated. Her finger hovered, between ‘Send’ and ‘Delete’. She started to reread what she had written, and she immediately realized, somewhere in the back of her head, that if she actually looked at what it was she had typed out, she would never send it.

She hit the ‘Send’ button with unnecessary force. It _vwoop_ ed as it sent out, and she turned it off, almost terrified, lay back, and stared at the ceiling mindlessly.

 _Ding_.

* * *

_i carry your heart with me(i carry it in_

_my heart)i am never without it(anywhere_

_i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done_

_by only me is your doing,my darling)_

_i fear_

_no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want_

_no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)_

_and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant_

_and whatever a sun will always sing is you_

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_

_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_

_and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows_

_higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)_

_and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_

_i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)_

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

\- e.e. cummings

**Author's Note:**

> this month is gonna be absolutely crazy, i can already tell. crazy but fun. 
> 
> check out all the other works and authors in this collection! go kudos and subscribe and do all those nice things to them! (also, if you want to follow my tumblr... [i'm right here](https://159.203.91.122/dogwithalamp)...)
> 
> survive!


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